Mike O'Brien

Mike stood for Parliament in North Warwickshire in 1987, when sitting Conservative M.P., Francis Maude, won the seat. Mike fought the constituency again in 1992 and was elected by a small majority. There were three main issues in the campaign, opencast mining, the BNRR and the future of Hams Hall.

For ten years Mike battled to prevent opencast mining threatening the villages of Dordon, Baddesley, Grendon, Polesworth, Shuttington and Newton Regis. People were worried about the dirt, noise and environmental damage that open casting for coal causes. Mike backed local residents campaigning against open cast applications. Under the opencast rules passed by the Conservatives it was hard to stop opencast and an Inspector agreed to opencast but Mike intervened with Ministers and stopped it. Mike then fought to change the law to prevent areas like North Warwickshire suffering from repeated applications. He succeeded in changing the law after the election of Labour Government. "Few things have given me greater pleasure than winning the fight against opencast," says Mike.

The campaign against the Birmingham Northern Relief Road was different. The Conservatives had promoted a private road through the west part of the constituency and passed an Act of Parliament to enable it, as well as signing contracts with penalty clauses if the road did not go ahead. Mike is a strong environmentalist and opposed the road. He initially won Labour backing to stop the new road on environmental grounds. But the West Midlands business community and the trade unions supported the road. In 1997 consent was given to build it. "I was devastated. I believed in our arguments. I thought we could stop the road. I had devoted a lot of my energy to the campaign. I met my angry constituents at local meetings. It was tough, they gave me a hard time, but an MP is accountable. I got some respect for having immediately faced them when we lost."

There was also a tough battle over the derelict power station site at Hams Hall near Coleshill. Many of Mike's constituents opposed the use of the site for industry. They wanted a park. But other constituents looked to Mike to fight to create jobs. Unemployment was running at over eleven per cent in North Warwickshire in 1992 after mine closures. The deprivation in former mining communities was serious. Mike fought to get the site designated for industry and manufacturing. Opponents said that manufacturing jobs would not come and that the site would all end up as warehousing but Mike lobbied hard to get BMW to come to the site. BMW were considering a site for a new factory in Hungary. After a controversial public inquiry, the site was opened with a rail terminal and hundreds of jobs have followed, including the most modern BMW car engine manufacturing plant in the world. "We battled against the odds to get the manufacturing jobs. We needed those jobs," said Mike. "And we got them."

A further success was the Prologis Business Park in Keresley and the Birch Coppice Business Park near Dordon. These kinds of initiatives helped create jobs in the area so that today unemployment is among the lowest in the Midlands.

Mike at freight terminal opening